Influence Of Social Media On Politics

A number of research studies have been conducted on the influence of social media ( (facebook, twitter, etc.) to young people’s political activeness nowadays. Many theories have been used to examine this issue and to explain the observed phenomenon. This means different aspects of examination from the previous studies on mainstream media (newspaper, broadcast, etc.) discourse to study the effects of social media on what kinds of political issues young people are thinking of. This study will try to examine how does social media’s coverage of political issues affect the political participation among young people between age 18 to 25, and especially how do the speeches of opinion leaders on social media affect people’s opinion and activeness on politics? A mixed methodology of survey research and content analysis will be applied to analyze the major context of this research.
By redefining social media and participation, Effing et al pointed out that with the growth of social media, “politicians and government could create opportunities for political participation: enabling, engaging and empowering followers for various benefits.” (p. 30）Nevertheless, their field study showed a results contradicting their prediction, which indicated that “use of social media does not always result in a more effecitve political campaign” (p. 32）. Based on this result, they set agenda for future studies: further exploration on how social media can be implemented to increase political participation, and what are the design principles of social media strategy to increase political participation. The reflection of these two questions can be incorporated into discussion of my research as my research proposal raises the questions of agenda setting and framing strategies, as an implementation of social media to increase political